Random Thought
There are many moments from 9/11 none of us will ever forget. I won’t recount them now, because I already did two years ago – and once was enough.
Except for one particular moment.
Around 8pm Mountain on 9/11, some talking head on CNN or FNC or MSNBC said they feared as many as 20,000 people might have been killed. I remember that moment quite clearly because I ran directly to the bathroom and threw up.
When I read last week that 25,000 people might have died in Louisiana and Mississippi, I didn’t even get queasy. It’s not that I care less for people in the South than I do people in the Northeast. Far from it. It’s because I learned a valuable lesson on 9/11: The human animal can be a remarkably tough creature to kill. Whatever the initial prediction is, divide by ten for a worst-case estimate.
Barely ten days after Katrina did her damnedest to ruin a great American city, we’re finding that maybe the damage wasn’t as bad as we were first told, and that maybe far fewer people died that we first feared.
Of course, many many thousands of people still lost everything they owned. Others were killed, not by the hurricane or her aftermath, but by human predators hunting in her wake. There are sons and daughters and mothers and fathers to bury – too many, no matter what the final tally is.
But as of right now, it seems our worst fears haven’t been realized. And for that, all of us can be thankful.
Well, I guess Bush just wasn’t trying, then…
Feh. I just learned that the Media likes *Big Round Scary Numbers*.
If it’s not confirmed, and it’d the media, it’s a number generated by WAG.
(Wild Assed Guess)
Well – this WAG was provided by an official source – the mayot of New Orleans.
After that it was just assumed to be true I guess.
Wild assed guess…..mayor of NOLA…hmmmmm…I think so.
Well, expect the conspiracy nuts to come out of the woodwork again. After every major hurricane of the past decade, the online whisperers have been saying that there were huge numbers of dead that weren’t being reported. These were being held by FEMA in secret refridgerated trailers and the press were being kept away. All this was, of course, to keep people from seeing what a screw up the govt was, how many poor people, minorities, etc. were killed. These rumors get even more derranged after Bush came into office, but they were there even during Clinton’s watch, and even before that.
Now, with the Bush administration asking for some common sense compassion wrt not showing pictures of bloated corpses, coupled with a lower than expected death toll, expect these theories to get major attention among the moonbat left.
It won’t be long until it’s “Bush is hiding corpses of poor black folk to hide the fact that he hates black people and he’s trying to hide the horrible failure of FEMA and the federal government!” meme comes out in full force.
Forget whether it was some pol (the mayor) or the MSM that may have stated the high estimate for Katrina. In all disasters (man-caused or natural) “experts” come out of the woodwork to make instantaneous, rather unsupported, estimates of damage (in human life and/or dollars) based on their (often bad) assumptions of “on any given day” theories. The media runs with the most extreme of those estimates — repeated ad infitum — and they are always proven to be exceedingly high. For example, the San Francisco “World Series” earthquake was estimated within minutes of the event to have caused thousands of deaths; hundreds by the collapse of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge alone.
Ultimately, it was determined tha tthe earthqauke had caused 67 deaths. Total. Throughout the affected region. So, while I’ll give credit to the “human creature’s toughness,” my casual response to damage/death estimates reflects more my skepticism of the instantaneous guesses than any lack of concern for the particular demographic effected.
Totally agree, Steve. I have a friend from N.O. who finally evac’ed to Houston. She’s sure the death toll will be 10,000+ because of all those “trapped in attics that couldn’t get out”. For God’s sake, if they couldn’t figure a way out of an attic in 7 days…well. Humans are tough and resourceful and only the weak and feeble will let themselves die without a hell of a fight.
Remember, too, that 50,000 body bags were projected as “going to be needed” both in Afghanistan AND Iraq prior to their respective invastions.
I’m glad somebody has finally said that perhaps “the damage was not that bad”. I looked at the images from New Orleans and noticed that apart from the stadium, all the buildings and houses seemed to have their roofs intact, and the structures were standing in situ. OK, the roads were flooded and there was water in most areas, but the structures stood.
Now imagine Bush, observing the scene from Air Force one. He sees a wet but largely intact New Orleans and a while later looks at Biloxi and other places in Mississipi and not only have the houses lost their roofs, they’ve been utterly flattened. Mile upon mile of complete devastation. Which area does he think has the greatest need? The MSM of course says NO because the people are a shootin’ and a lootin’ while the Mississipi folk who recieved the brunt of the storm react in a more stoic and more civilized way.
So, what? You mean Shep Smith was overselling the Armageddon?
From the Washington Post:City officials said Friday that the death toll from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath may be far lower than originally feared, as troops and police shifted their attention from rescue of the living to recovery of those who…
Of course, we’ll never have an accurate account, since ole Randall over at Huffpo tells us the victims ate many of their dead neighbors.
Maybe we can get the Lancet to come over and do a study…
We can be thankful of that, but it does not help alleviate the fears that our current administration is not making us safer.
That’s not true.
This is a superb log of the events as they occured, complete with irrefutable evidence of the federal govt. dropping the ball. (the links listed on the site are to The White House, DOD and Office of the Governor websites that show the original memorandums)Timeline is here:
http://www.thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline
You can see where the Governor requested Federal assistance on August 27, two days before the hurricane made landfall.
Here is an excerpt from the letter to President Bush from Kathleen Blanco. You can see it for yourself here:
http://www.gov.state.la.us/Press_Release_detail.asp?id=976
“I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster.”
Here is an excerpt of the President’s response:
You can read the complete memorandum here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050827-1.html
“Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.”
Now here’s my question: If the president knew the gravity of the situation and ordered federal assistance, why, when it was known by Tuesday FEMA was not responding the way they had been ordered, did he not mobilize another course of action by the military or Homeland Security? Our military is trained to be extremely efficient in the event of disaster. The U.S.S. Bataan was even waiting off the coast with doctors, a full shelter, food, and water, yet they waited for the president to give the order to assist. Did Fema drop the ball? Yes. Did Homeland Security drop the ball? Yes. Did the president drop the ball? Yes.
Should all of these people be held accountable for the lack of assistance Louisiana received that was requested?
Definitely.
If nothing else the president is guilty of resting on his laurels and inattentiveness. Whatever happened to “The buck stops here?”
There were many able bodied people who could have gotten out sooner! They showed on one of the news stations the night before Katrina hit landfall… Many people who were warned wanted to stay and have a “Hurricane Party”… It is much easier to blame others for your stupidity than to take the blame on yourself!… It is like this. If you are able to get up and walk, you can get anywhere!…AND If you get tired of walking? You can run!
I wasn’t going to post this yesterday, but I will today, because now I see I’m not the only one who thinks you have invented this ‘throwing up’ story out of whole cloth. There’s skepticism over at Jeff Goldstein’s blog too.
I mean, come on. Look, I know you force your prose to take on this kind of Grim Dramatic Voice every time you write about Sept. 11. But you don’t need to fake the drama of the actual content, too.
Your overall political philosophy is dead-on. That’s why I wish you didn’t have to come off like such a poseur sometimes.
There are many moments from 9/11 none of us will ever forget. I won’t recount them now, because I already did two years ago – and once was enough.
breathless dramatic paragraph break
Except for one particular moment.
Seriously. You’re using this cliff-hanger construction and purple prose to deliver a quick point about math and numbers, for God’s sake.
Sure, Mountain Girl, Blanco put in a Stafford Act request for federal assistance on the 27th. Of course, you don’t bother to say what federal assistance she requested. She requested $9 million. That’s it. She didn’t request any material assistance, just federal dollars to cover her state costs.
You quote the Whitehouse press release putting FEMA into action, but you don’t bother with the restrictions on FEMA’s actions – specifically from the National Response Plan – Catastrophi Incident Annex policy section: “Federal resources arriving at a Federal mobilization center or staging area remain there until requested by State/local incident command authorities, when they are integrated into the incident response effort.”
The answer to your question is here, which basically says Blanco refused to cede control.
A big problem with cranks on both the right and left is that they actually manage to convince some people the lies they spew are true, or at least have some worisome basis. So, in the late 1990′s there were a ton of crackpots convincing people that the great Y2K catastrophy would result in the US becomming a FEMA dictatorship.
Such crap leads people to vastly overrate the authority of FEMA. In the main, FEMA is a resouce coordinator between the state/local authorities and federal agencies. Unless Blanco and Nagin voluntarily ceded control, or the President declared portions of Lousiana in insurrection and stripped them of control, the show was theirs and FEMA’s role was to take their requests for specific types of resources and attempt to fill them. Requests of, “I need everything you have got,” are worse than useless.
After 5-years screaming about Chimpy McBusHitler the Fascist Dictator, the left is now upset that Bush isn’t a dictator.
Some comments from a New Orleans evacuee who made it to Jackson MS just in time:
Don’t assume that things aren’t that bad in flooded areas just because from the air it looks like houses are where they always were and the roofs are intact. (Except for where they were hacked open by desperate people inside or, if they were lucky, by rescuers from the outside.) I can tell you that while many of them may, that is may, be on brick piling foundations for a foot or maybe two, above that they are wood, and in many areas the water went way up to eight or ten feet. Old wood at that, as most of these buildings are up to 100 years old, maybe more. Current Army Corps of Engineers estimate is that it will take 40 days, not 80, to get the water out. That’s an improvement, but still all that dry old wood is going to rot. Vast numbers of houses will have to be demolished, because they will be unrepairable.
As for Mayor Nagin, all I can say is he’s the best mayor I’ve seen there in my experience. (Lived there 10 years, been visiting for 25.) Maybe that means the bar’s set pretty low in NOLA, but it still makes him the best. As for his intemperate remarks and (let’s hope) overestimation of the death toll, it’s probably a mix of both genuine shock at what had happened on his watch, and a calculated attempt to shock the relief providers and shake as many resources loose as possible, as quickly as possible. Can’t blame him for that.
**WARNING** GEEK ALERT! **WARNING**
Memory throws up a line from one of the Star Trek movies:
Scotty (on intercom): I’ll need eight hours to make the repairs, but you dinna have eight hours, so I’ll do it fer ya in two.
Kirk: Mr. Scott, have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?
Scotty: Sartainly, sir! How else de ya think I kept me reputation as a miracle worker!
Nagin may have seen the movie.
Mountain Girl, Gov. Blanco asked for funding. Do you know of any checks that bounced? If not, then your comment is silly.
I can’t help but think that the 3000 9/11 deaths is a friggin’ miracle and should be considered a failure by the Islamofacists.
If they’d launched their attacks an hour later in the day, and driven the planes into the buildings 10 or 20 stories lower, they well could have ended up with casualties an order of magnitude greater.
Remembering 911
Today is the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by the Islamist terrorist group al Qaeda.
Steven Taylor posts his recollections of the day, which closer mirror my own since we were working in the s…
A Day For Remembering
[This was originally posted September 11, 2004. I have also reposted "Flame Of Hope" which was written by my son and originally posted on September 14, 2004. I have also linked to other blogs with "never forget posts."] It was
Ignore her, she posted the same hit-and-run over at Dailypundit.
She never thought assistance translates to $.
The usual suspects say the usual things.Cindy Sheehan blames the war in Iraq.Robert K. jr. blames Bush for not signing the Kyoto treaty. Sharpton blames racism. There will be more to come of course. Such as Michael Moore blaming corporations. Socialist Van den huevel blaming the free martket. My mother blaming me for not getting married. Did I leave any other victims out?
Early this evening (Sunday 11 Sept) as I listened to CNN, I was thunderstruck at the statistic of only 154 confirmed dead. The report didn
Stephen: I’m reminded of an old military saying that goes, “Things are never as bad, nor as good, as first reported.”
Kind of hits the spot.
I have reflected on this same thing, somewhat, here.